722 REPORT — 1902. 



unknown to men who have passed through elaborate mathematical studies of 

 mechanics. Students found out in that laboratory the worth of formulae ; they 

 gained courage in making calculations from formulae, for they had found out the 

 extent of their own ignorance and knowledge. 



I have never approved of elaborate steam-engines got up for students' labora- 

 tory exercise-work. A professor who had devoted much thought for a year to the 

 construction of such a four-cylinder engine showed a friend how any one or any 

 two or any three or all four cylinders, with or without jacketing, could be used in 

 all sorts of ways. The friend ventured to say : ' This engine will be used just once 

 and never after.' The professor was angry, but his friend proved to be right. The 

 professor made experiments with it once himself with a few good students. Un- 

 fortunately it was not a sufficiently elaborate investigation for publication After- 

 wards he never had time personally to superintend such work ; his assistants were 

 busy at other things ; his students could not be trusted with the engine by them- 

 selves, and to this day it stands in the laboratory a beautiful but useless piece of 

 apparatus. At Finsbury there was an excellent one-cylinder engine with vaporising 

 condenser. It drove the workshops and electric generators. On a field-day it 

 drove an electric generator only, and perhaps thirty students made measurements. 

 Each of them had already acted as stoker and engine-driver, as oiler and tester of 

 the machinery, lighting fires, taking indicator diagrams, weighing coals, opening and 

 closing cocks from seven in the morning to ten at night, so that everything was 

 well known to him. They maintained three different steady loads for trials of three 

 hours each. They divided into groups, one from each group ceasing to take a 

 particular kind of observation every ten minutes and removing to another job. AH 

 watches were made to agree, and each student noted the time of each observation. 

 These observations were : — Takiug indicator diagrams, checking the speed indicator, 

 taking temperature of feed-water, quantity of feed by meter (the meter had been 

 carefully checked by gauge-notch, and every other instrument used by us had 

 been tested weeks before), taking the actual horse-power passing through a 

 dynamometer coupling on the shaft, taking boiler and valve-chest pressures and 

 vacuum pressures on the roof and in the engine-room, weighing coals (the calorific 

 value had already been tested), taking the horse-power given out by the dynamo, 

 counting the electric lamps in use, and so on. Each student was well prepared 

 beforehand. During the next week he reduced his own observations, and some of 

 the results were gathered on one great table. One lesson that this taught could 

 never be forgotten — how the energy of one pound of coal was disposed of. So 

 much up the chimney or by radiation from boiler or steam-jacket and pipes ; in 

 condensation in the cylinder ; to the condenser ; in engine friction ;_ in shaft 

 friction, &c. I cannot imagine a more important lesson to a young engineer than 

 this one tauo-ht through a common Avorking engine. The students had the same 

 sort of experience with a gas-engine. I need hardly say how important it was that 

 the Professor himself should take tharge of the whole work leading up to, during, 

 and after such a field-day. 



The difficulty about all laboratory exercise work worth the name is that of 

 finding demonstrators and assistants who are wise and energetic.^ Through 

 foolishness and laziness the most beautiful system becomes an unmeaning routine, 

 and the more smoothly it works the less educational it is. In England just now 

 the curse of all education is the small amount of money available for the wages 

 of teachers — ^just enough to attract mediocre men. I have been told, and I can 

 easily imagine, that such men have one talent over-developed, the talent for 

 makiD"- their job softer and softer, until at length they just sit at a table, main- 

 taining discipline merely by their presence, answering the questions of such 

 students as are earnest enough to come and worry them. In such cases it is 

 absolutely necessary to periodically upset their clockwork arrangements. After 

 such an artificial earthquake one might be reminded of what occurred at the pool 

 of Bethesda, whose waters had their healing property restored when the angel 

 came down and troubled them. But for a permanently good arrangement there 

 ought to be very much higher wages all round in the teaching profession. 



No kind of engineering has developed so rapidly as the electrical. Why, 



